A Good Friday visit to Jerusalem
I looked and saw a man hanging shamefully on top of a hill.
Between two others, struck through and pinned up as an ominous bulletin
“Warning,” the whole scene says, “don’t end up like one of these.”
“Folly and shame” is all that can be ascribed to these lowest of society.
I shake my head unknowingly as I pass by the crowd
noting the jeers and the taunts, I say “this is meaningless.”
Trying to brisk through my day, keeping up with whatever normalcy I can muster.
But, something grips me about that man on the middle cross.
He hangs there, yet “differently.” He speaks no cursed speech, no vile language.
The sign above his head seems to mock, but what is the cause of that mocking?
“King of the Jews” seems a funny charge when Herod is still living.
Is this another kind of king, hanging there so meekly?
“What a gruesome and weak display of power,” I say to myself
as I move on to tasks of my life. “Whatever cause he lived for Is dying on the vine.”
I laugh to myself, but at the end of the laugh I pause,
swallowing, I say “no king like I’ve ever seen.”
Days pass, and that middle man has become somewhat of a pebble in my shoe.
Naturally, I must be wiser and better, after all, it was him hanging there.
But I move about life more uneasily, anxiously, “am I paranoid?”
“Get out of my head, shameful King!” I say with whatever inner authority I can muster.
Weeks pass, and I head into the city for another festival.
I hear a commotion, a herald standing in the street.
I hear his closing line - it strikes me. “Let all the house of Israel know that this is the Christ of God
This crucified Jesus.” Could it be? That man on the middle cross?
With heart beating in my throat, I try vainly to move on
yet, a strange urge to stop and remember, stop and consider grips me.
What if that middle man, that shameful king, was just this?
What if that foolish criminal hanging so shamefully is, in fact, the real King?
Gripped to the heart, I stop and cry out to the herald, “What shall I do?”
Though my hand held no hammer, and my fingers grasped no nails,
And though my wrists wielded no whip and my arms pressed down no crown of thorns
I am convinced that somehow his death is mine to own.
And the herald said to me, “Turn to this crucified King!”
Die in his death, and live, for He lives!”
Years later, I thought back and it all made sense when I read the words of another herald
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
